Until I Saw Your Smile

by J. J. Murray

  Man, I wish I had some coffee.

  He felt under his cushion and found an old pen, a remote to a TV he no longer owned, a cell phone with no battery, and a quarter. He dug under every cushion, rifled through every drawer, checked every pocket, and moved his bed to the side, eventually amassing a small fortune in change.

  He even took the pennies from penny loafers he hadn’t worn in years

  He also found Joy’s matching leopard-striped bra.

  After counting out the change on the kitchen table, he decided he had enough for one large cup of Angela’s house blend with a nickel tip to spare.

  After a short nap, he showered, shaved, and put on jeans, Nikes, and a hoody.

  Angela was right.

  This is getting to be a habit.

  Chapter 7

  The sun shielded by bulbous dark clouds, Matthew walked to Angela’s place.

  It’s not Smith’s Sweet Treats and Coffee to me anymore. It’s Angela’s place. I am going to Angela’s place because that’s where she and her smile hang out.

  He noticed that the sidewalk across the street from Angela’s place had gotten a face-lift, several potholes had been filled in the street near the curb, and brand-new parking meters stood in front of La Estrella. Angela’s sidewalk, however, was still hilly, splitting, and treacherous.

  When he entered, he saw Angela behind the counter and smiled. “Good morning, Angela.”

  “Good morning, Matthew,” she said. “Happy Kite Flying Day.”

  Matthew squinted. “But it’s winter.”

  “Hey,” Angela said with a shrug. “I don’t make the holidays. I only announce them.” She smiled. “I haven’t seen you in a week.”

  “Yeah. It’s been a long week, too.”

  “The adventurous life you lead.” She wiped her hands on a towel. “What can I get you?”

  Matthew emptied his pockets and made a stack of change on the counter. “What can I get with this?”

  Angela laughed.

  Her laugh has music in it. I like it. “What do I get? I get a laugh and a smile. It was worth the search of my apartment. I think some of these coins are valuable. Look at all the wheat cents and Liberty dimes. That quarter might be pure silver.”

  Angela scooped them up, separating them into the register. “He pays me with change.”

  “Sorry,” Matthew said. “I had the most expensive date of my life last night.”

  Angela sighed. “How expensive?”

  “If I were frugal, which I’m learning to be too slowly for my own good,” Matthew said, “I could use what I spent on one meal last night to buy groceries for the next six months.”

  “That’s expensive.” She plucked a large cup from a stack of cups. “Were the police involved?”

  “Not this time,” Matthew said. “That might have made the evening more amazing and iconic.”

  Angela blinked. “Amazing and iconic.”

  “Her favorite two words.”

  Angela poured him a cup of house blend and handed it to him. “She sounds young.”

  Matthew took a sip. Yes. This is so good. “I actually think she was older than me. I counted at least three layers of makeup on her face.” Like rings on a tree.

  “Does this mean you won’t be going out with her again?” Angela asked.

  Now there’s a direct question. “Let’s just say I won’t be paying for her not to talk to me again.”

  She pointed at the middle booth. “Your booth is free.”

  My booth? I like the sound of that. “Will you join me?” Matthew asked.

  “I’m not too busy at the moment.”

  Matthew slid into one side of the booth, Angela into the other.

  “Where was she from?” Angela asked.

  “Manhattan,” Matthew said. “Upper East Side. She lives in Azure. Her building has a name of its very own.”

  Angela shook her head slightly. “But you chose her, right?”

  “Michael, a friend of mine, who really isn’t much of a friend of mine anymore, set us up,” Matthew said. “He set me up. He told me she’d be perfect for me.”

  “Nobody and nothing are perfect,” Angela said.

  “I agree.” He looked through the front window. “That side of the street almost looks perfect, though. The city is really sucking up to La Estrella.”

  Angela frowned and sighed. “I know. I’ve been complaining for years about the sidewalks and the street in front of this place. For a nice multiyear tax break, they get everything pretty. Such a waste of a nice space. It could be a great place for a club or a theater or even a bookstore.”

  “Anything but a coffee shop, huh?” Matthew said.

  Angela nodded. “Right. My luck.” A buzzer sounded. “Care for some raspberry pastries?”

  “I barely had enough for the coffee,” Matthew said.

  Angela stood. “On the house. I’m trying a new recipe, and you can tell me if they’re any good.”

  “Okay.”

  He watched Angela sweep gracefully into the back, returning with a large metal tray. After sliding most of the pastries on the tray onto another tray in the display case, she put several pastries on a plate and brought it to Matthew’s booth, setting the plate in front of him.

  “It’ll cost you a story,” she said.

  “A story is all I can afford to give you.” He took a bite. “This is good.”

  “How good?” Angela asked.

  Matthew savored the flavors. “On a scale of one to ten . . . a nine-point-nine.”

  “Not a ten?” Angela asked.

  “I’d feel better if I were paying you for it,” Matthew said.

  “Don’t worry about it.” She slid into the booth. “Tell me about your date with the woman who wouldn’t speak to you.”

  “You can’t really be interested in my dysfunctional love life,” Matthew said.

  “Tell me.”

  She must be interested. “Her name is Victoria Inez Preston.”

  “V-I-P,” Angela said. “So far so bad.”

  “And it gets worse. I sat at Le Bernardin for forty-five minutes awaiting her arrival.” He took another bite. Delicious.

  “How trifling,” Angela said. “She had to make a grand entrance, huh?”

  “And that, dear Angela, is what it was,” Matthew said. “Lots of men got whiplash watching her and her friend come in.”

  Angela blinked rapidly. “She brought a friend.”

  “Her oldest and dearest friend, Debbie, her shorter, stockier twin.”

  Angela closed her mouth tightly. She sighed. “She brought an ugly friend with her on her date.”

  “Well, she wasn’t that ugly.” She had pretty . . . knuckles.

  “Compared to your date?” Angela asked.

  “Okay, she was . . . large.” Matthew smiled. “She wore shoes far too small for her feet.”

  Angela shook her head. “Victoria brought her along to make herself feel prettier.”

  “I don’t know why,” Matthew said. “Victoria is well-made.”

  “Well-made?” Angela rolled her eyes. “You mean she’s a babe, a hottie, a real honey.”

  Matthew stared at his pastry. “She was fine. Yes.”

  Angela sighed. “Then what happened?”

  “I ate food I couldn’t identify and that didn’t like me later while they ate me into bankruptcy,” Matthew said. “They talked on the phone with Freddie. He sounded gay, but I can never tell. They flirted with any man who would look at them, and they texted each other while they were sitting inches apart.”

  “How old were these women?” Angela asked.

  “Maybe mid- to late-thirties.” He squinted. “I don’t think the rich ever grow up, mainly because they don’t have to.”

  “How did your evening end?” Angela asked.

  Matthew tapped the table with fingers. “This is the end of my evening. I walked down First Avenue and across the bridge . . . to see you.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Ok
ay, I went home to shave and shower first,” Matthew said. “And to find some change.”

  “Right.”

  “Really. I can always count on you, and you don’t break my bank account.” He finished the first pastry. “And you make me addictive sweets to eat. These are bangin’.”

  Angela laughed. “Bangin’?”

  “Angela’s Bangin’ Pastries,” Matthew said. “It has a nice ring to it.”

  Angela shook her head and slipped out of the booth as the door opened and a customer headed straight for the counter. “I think your luck with women is about to change.”

  “How do you know?” Matthew asked.

  “Your luck can only get better, right?”

  Matthew tore the next pastry in two, the steam rising in front of him. “I will pay you back for these.”

  Angela stared at him. “Oh, Matthew, darling, that would be so amazing.”

  “And iconic?”

  Angela shook her head. “Just amazing.”

  Later at his apartment, Matthew checked his Web site. A client? No way. And on a Saturday? My luck might be changing after all.

  The Haitian Free Pentecostal Church in the Bronx wanted his help getting nonprofit status as quickly as possible. The process, though tedious, was easy to do and involved a stack of 501c forms. He called the number in the e-mail query.

  “Haitian Free, this is Mary. How may I help you this blessed day?”

  Soft, sexy voice. “Hi, Mary, This is Matthew McConnell. Your church contacted me through my Web site—”

  “The Cheap Brooklyn Lawyer site, right?”

  I never should have chosen that name. “I wasn’t sure if anyone would be there on a Saturday.”

  “There’s always something going on here,” Mary said.

  “Well, I find that I have a free afternoon today,” Matthew said, “and I could come up to walk Pastor Jean through the forms.”

  “Oh, he’ll be tired from service,” Mary said, “but you can explain the forms to me. I’m the church secretary and treasurer.”

  “Splendid. Mary, what’s the best route to get there from Williamsburg? It’s been a while since I’ve been to the Bronx. I assume I take the J train then the 4 and then . . .”

  “The 2,” she said. “We’re a block north of the station.”

  “See you in about an hour then.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Matthew arrived ninety minutes later at the church, a low-slung storefront that covered half a city block, just as a Saturday service was ending. He walked through a throng into the reception area.

  A short, buxom woman stepped up to him. “Are you Matthew?”

  Matthew looked down at the woman, her clothes colorful and concealing very little of her dark skin. “Are you Mary?”

  Mary nodded. “I’m Mary Primm.”

  Mary was not what Matthew expected a church secretary to look like. Mary had wavy hair streaked with pink and yellow to match the dress she was almost wearing, a smooth face, dark red lips, and a booty that cried, “Stare at me!”

  “Let’s go to the office,” she said.

  Matthew followed Mary’s swaying form to a tiny office barely big enough for a desk and two chairs. He took her through the stack of incorporation forms slowly, explaining each one while trying not to stare at her cleavage.

  After two hours, he collected one hundred dollars.

  “Why so little?” Mary asked.

  “I always pray for repeat business,” Matthew said.

  “We will definitely keep you in mind,” Mary said.

  And I will keep your compact, sexy body in mind, too. “Have Pastor Jean sign, well, everywhere, and mail everything where it needs to go along with the appropriate fees.”

  “So many hoops to jump through,” Mary said.

  Matthew stood. “You’re keeping money from the government. They want to make it as hard as possible for you to do so.”

  Mary put the stack of forms into a file folder. “Matthew, what church do you attend?”

  “I occasionally go to Our Lady of Consolation.” Let’s see, twice a year at most.

  “You’re Catholic then?”

  “Yes,” Matthew said. “I went to Most Holy Trinity in Williamsburg.”

  Mary nodded. “I went to Archbishop Molloy. I used to be Catholic.”

  “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic” isn’t true anymore? “Oh?”

  “Now I’m a Christian,” Mary said. “The Lord has been very good to me.”

  I will agree to that. Mary has to have the most clearly defined breasts I have ever seen.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” Mary asked.

  Sleeping. “It depends.”

  “You could come to service,” Mary said.

  Look how her eyes light up. Such dark eyes. “I’ve had an exhausting few days, Mary.” None of it work-related, of course.

  “What about Wednesday night?” she asked.

  I’m being asked out in a church. This is new. “I don’t think I have anything planned.”

  “Meet me here at four-thirty,” Mary said, “and we’ll go get something to eat.”

  The money she just paid me will pay for the date. Angela was right. My luck is changing. “Okay. And then?”

  Mary smiled. “And then . . . we’ll see what happens.”

  As Matthew rode the trains back to Williamsburg, he pondered a Wednesday date. Why two days before Valentine’s Day? Why not Valentine’s Day itself? Maybe she’s testing me out first.

  He closed his eyes and saw Mary wearing a Catholic school uniform, her shapely legs literally smoking out of a tight skirt, her shirt buttons straining. I wonder if Mary was a typical Catholic school girl. The ones I remember were some wild things. As soon as they left school, out came the smokes, the makeup, the cursing, and the strut. They may have been cowering as they went into confession, but they were grinning when they came out.

  Chapter 8

  Mary and Matthew met in front of the church on Wednesday, Mary wearing a long, form-fitting dress in every color Crayola ever created, Matthew in jeans, a white sweater, and a blue windbreaker.

  I have dressed all wrong.

  She led him to the nearby Gold Star Jerk Center two doors down from Arkansas Fried Chicken and mere steps from the number 2 subway station. She ordered for both of them: gungo peas soup, jerk chicken, and a pie plate full of rice and peas drowning in coconut milk and spicy sauces.

  “You want some strong coffee to go,” the counter girl told Matthew.

  That was more an order than a question. “This water is enough,” Matthew said. “I’m sure I’ll need it.”

  The counter girl eyed Mary before staring at Matthew. “I strongly recommend you get lots of strong coffee. At least two large cups.”

  “I’m okay, thanks,” Matthew said holding up his cup.

  He turned to Mary as they walked away. “What was that about?”

  “She knows me,” Mary said.

  “Am I going to need coffee to keep up with you?” Matthew asked.

  Mary smiled. “Something like that.”

  Since a February picnic on the banks of the Bronx River was out of the question, they walked back to the church, where Mary’s office seemed smaller and more intimate. They ate mostly in silence, Matthew occasionally smacking his lips and fanning the air in front of his face.

  “I used to be a very bad girl, Matthew,” Mary said, dabbing at her lips with a napkin. “You name it, and I did it.”

  This isn’t exactly the place to be naming bad things. I can think them, though. What a way to start a conversation! “We all have our wild sides.”

  “All I had was a wild side,” Mary said. “I went to Catholic school, but I didn’t learn anything spiritual. I ran the streets the second school ended. I’m not like that anymore. I’m a born-again Christian now, so I don’t drink, smoke, curse, or fornicate.”

  Fornicate?

  “Not before marriage,” Mary added.

  It’s strange to he
ar such an ancient word coming out of such a sexy, young mouth.

  “Are you saved, Matthew?” Mary asked.

  Oh boy. I ran into this in college with a cute Puerto Rican girl from Paterson, New Jersey. It didn’t end well. “I’m not saved as you and your church probably mean. I was baptized.”

  “Oh, Matthew, Matthew,” Mary said. “You know you’re going to hell, right?”

  And we’ve just met. “Well, I don’t know what to say to that.” Other than it’s extremely rude to tell someone you barely know that he’s going to hell over some jerk chicken and gungo peas soup.

  “ ‘The wages of sin is death,’ ” Mary said, “ ‘but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.’ ”

  The wages of sin are death since “wages” is plural, but I won’t quibble. “I know that, Mary. I did study the Bible.”

  “I was living a life of death when I was Catholic,” Mary said. “I was pure evil. I pierced nearly every part of my body.”

  What parts do you leave out? Inquiring minds want to know.

  “I also tattooed places I shouldn’t have,” Mary said.

  Such as?

  “The tattoos are fading and most of my piercings have closed up,” Mary said, “but they’re still a constant reminder of my sin. I slept around, I drank, I smoked, and I did drugs. I did the most sinful things, and I have trouble remembering to this day all the evil I did. You know you’ve been bad when you can’t remember all the bad you’ve done. But I don’t want to talk about my past. I’ve put my sin far behind me. I want to talk about yours.”

  “My past or my sin?” Matthew asked.

  “They’re one and the same, aren’t they?” Mary asked.

  “Some of it.” And I’m suddenly not hungry.

  Mary smiled, widening her eyes. “You don’t think you’re sinful, do you, Matthew?”

  “I know I am, Mary,” Matthew said, “but I don’t dwell on it.”

  “You should,” Mary said. “Your sin is keeping you from heaven.”

  And this conversation is keeping you from a Valentine’s Day date with me, Mary. “I still think I’ll make it to heaven eventually.”

  “You don’t still believe in purgatory, do you?” Mary asked.

  “I’ve never been very sure about purgatory.” This conversation is kind of like purgatory, though, because a heavenly woman is talking about hell, and I’m in between. “It seems too much like a cosmic time out.”